I’ve resumed a daily habit of reading through a dictionary page or two looking for new-to-me words and ideas and copying the best of them into my common notebook. This is so much fun I’m not sure why I quit, other than perhaps recognizing the rabbit holes produced are time-sucks with little practical value beyond the pleasure and so I took away my fun. Anyway, I'm back at it.
Example: breatharian. This is a person who believes that it is possible, through meditation, to reach a level of consciousness where one can exist on air alone. Also known as inedia and “pranic nourishment.” Origin: 1970s.
This raises questions, yes? Like, has anyone ever successfully been a practitioner? For how long? Any scientific studies or formal groups (Church of the Living Breatharians, perhaps)? Pursuing these questions led me straight to the hilarious realm of pseudoscience featuring a 1669 report by John Reynolds titled “A Discourse upon Prodigious Abstinence Occasioned by the Twelve Months Fasting of Martha Taylor” and a tidbit concerning physician and occultist Paracelsus (1493-1541) who was described as having lived “several years by taking only one half scrupule of Solar Quintessence” and nothing more.
I guessed breatharianism was something one could only claim in lands and times far, far away, but then I learned about a 2011 documentary titled Eat the Sun (that yummy, filling solar quintessence), and Wiley Brooks (1936-2016) who founded the Breatharian Institute of America, and Jasmuheen (born Ellen Grave) who claimed to practice “pranic nourishment” in the 1990s, for which she was given the Bent Spoon Award by the Australian Skeptics in 2000.
By the way, the Bent Spoon Award is “presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle,” a rabbit hole for another day.
Just a short hop later I’m laughing myself silly on the Ig Noble Awards website. My favorite among the past winners: the scientists who published a study titled “Blackholes fulfill all the technical requirements for being the location of hell.”
When I was in elementary school, copying between a quarter to a full page of the dictionary was the punishment for unruly classroom behavior. I don’t remember learning anything from that, other than how tedious school could be sometimes, but nowadays, I think if I had to choose just one book for the “You are stranded on a deserted island” question, I’d choose a really good dictionary.
PS: the "art" used above was created by AI imagemaker because I was curious. I forced it to redo my requested parameters several times in several different formats. What a strange new world we have.
I can fully appreciate that, Tayo. I have done that, as well, and my mom used to "make" me read the encyclopedia, when I was challenging. Of course, I never told her that I enjoyed it. Get together, soon?